Beyond the Great River (People of the Longhouse Book 1) Read online

  He bit his lips, choking the words of argument back. A warrior of his age was not to argue with his leaders, however promising and sought after he might have been. He had vowed never to make any trouble, venturing none of his opinions unless asked for, not until after he had been made a leader. His recent experience was more than enough. Stubborn hotheads, however fierce and skillful and generally talented, were a nuisance, excluded from some raiding parties, not invited to join every War Dance. Some warriors’ leaders had good memories, too good to make the argument seem like a worthwhile idea.

  Grabbing the side of the smaller boat, a light canoe made out of bark and not the heavier vessel dug out of a solid log, fit to carry more than two people, he lifted it with a swing, trying to make it look like an easy work.

  A last glance at the towering hill made his stomach squeeze again. The presence was still there, still watching. He could feel its hate-filled gaze burning his back as he headed off the shore and toward the nearest trees, displaying as little discomfort as he could, the sleek, unpolished wood cutting into his shoulders.

  Chapter 2

  The last of the evening sun washed the poles of the palisade as it towered ahead, a friendly presence, promising safety. It pleased her, despite her mounting worry. Only the best of runners would have covered the distance from that faraway grove, reaching the village before Father Sun descended into the other world, to rest and gather his strength for the next day. Only the fastest, and those who had the stamina to go on and on, without pausing to catch their breath. Not many could do this. Not in their village, although there was this boy from Skootuck, that large settlement to the east, where the leaders of the clans were meeting from time to time…

  She shook her head to get rid of trivial thoughts, gasping for breath, charging through the opening in the fence. Many people were out and about, men, women, elders and children. Some of the hunters had come back from the hills by now, after snaring doves, or shooting beavers and moose, plentiful during this season. More irrelevant thoughts. She rushed on, oblivious of the stares.

  “Kentika!”

  The stern voice of her Great Aunt, the prominent woman of their clan, made her heart lurch, although it had been doing anything but beating evenly before.

  “Not now, Honorable Aunt.” She didn’t slow her step. “I need to find Father.”

  “You what?” The elderly woman’s voice vibrated with irritation.

  “That girl!” said someone with a chuckle. “She will be the end of us.”

  Their voices dissipated behind her back as she rounded the corner of the nearest building, then another. The council people. She needed to reach them at once. If not Father, then someone else of importance would be of help, and they would know what to do.

  “Kentika, wait!” This time it was Namaas, a round-faced girl from her clan, their houses situated on the same slope, side by side, creating a corridor with the towering bark walls. “Wait.”

  “I can’t,” she gasped. “I need to find Father.”

  “What happened?”

  As she was truly exhausted by now, Namaas caught up with her easily, falling into her step, anxious to keep up. “Where have you been?”

  “Out there.” She rounded another corner, relieved to see the square serving for special ceremonies spreading ahead. The end of the incline.

  “I know you were out there. Both Honorable Aunts were so angry with you!” Gasping for breath in her turn, Namaas stumbled, grabbing Kentika’s arm to stabilize herself. “It is a harvest moon, Sister. What were you thinking?”

  Forced to slow her step, secretly glad for the respite and the chance to catch her breath before she would have to face important people, Kentika shook the persistent grip off.

  “They are always angry with me. What’s new about that?”

  “Well, they were angrier than usual.” The girl narrowed her eyes, regaining her confidence now that they weren’t moving at a neck-breaking speed. “We were working hard harvesting the fields, just to let you know. It is our duty. Strolling around the woods is not.”

  “I was not strolling. I just wanted—” She stopped herself, enraged. There would be enough time to sound excuses when facing her mother and her aunts, and others of her clan elders. She didn’t owe an explanation now, not to this buzzing mosquito. “It is not of your interest what I was doing, Namaas. Mind your own business.”

  “It is everyone’s business when one is not ready to do her duties. It is…” The girl’s voice trailed off, as she took a step back, quailing under Kentika’s glare. “You can’t just do whatever you like,” she finished in a small voice.

  Kentika’s own breath hissed, drawn in loudly through her nose, as her lips were pressed too tight to allow its passage.

  “It is not your place to tell me what to do, Namaas. Go away before I make you go.”

  “What are you doing here, girls?” The voice of the Turtle Clan’s leading man startled them both, making them turn around in panic, their hearts pounding. “Have you done with your chores for today? I doubt the women of your clans would confirm that claim.” He eyed them through his narrowing eyes, sternly but not unkindly. “Off with you two.” There was finality to the dismissing wave of his hand.

  “Has Father come back from Skootuck?” She blurted it out without thinking, the silly quarrel with her childhood playmate forgotten. What preyed on her mind, the terrible presence upon the shores of the Long Creek, loomed ominously, pushing the other considerations away.

  A freezing gaze was her answer. “Go back to your family and your chores, girl.” There was no amused kindness in the man’s tone anymore.

  She pressed her palms tight. “I need to tell you something. Something important.”

  The chilliness in the man’s gaze increased, reflecting the worst of the Freezing Moons.

  “Please, it’s important!”

  “Talk to your mother, girl. She will let us know if what you wish to tell us is of importance.” The words lingered, weighing upon the darkening air like heavy stones.

  She fought the urge to take a step back, Namaas’ footsteps dying away, leaving her all alone.

  “I saw… there, on the Long Creek banks… I saw…” She licked her lips, gathering the remnants of her courage. “There are enemy warriors there, many warriors. A large party. Twenty, maybe more. They were camping on the banks of the Long Creek. On our side.” The widening eyes of her converser made the wild pounding of her heart subdue. “I saw them. They were taking a rest. Their canoes were out of the water.”

  “Where exactly?” This came out as quite a bark, making her heart lurch again.

  “Where the Sacred Trail ends. Up on the Black Hill.”

  She watched the man’s strong jaw jutting, his eyes turning darker.

  “When did you see them?”

  “When Father Sun was about halfway toward his resting place.”

  One eyebrow climbed up, then dropped back without a remark. They all knew she was a runner, one more inappropriate thing she was good at.

  “Come with me.”

  Her stomach churning, she followed, trying to think what to say if asked what she had been doing there, so far away from home and at a time as pressing as near-harvest moon. There was no passable explanation to that, no ready-made lies she was never good at coming up with, not like some other girls. Both her younger cousins were experts on preparing excuses, fluttering their eyelashes while opening their eyes wide, getting away with anything they did wrong, quite a few transgressions. Living in the same house with those two, sharing the cozy space along with the fireplace, she had had her chances to learn their technique well. But not to implement it. Her crimes were too great to get away with pretended innocence, and she was not good at telling false stories.

  The men squatting around the central fire stared at her stonily, their faces unreadable. She listened to the words of the leader who had brought her in, her mind not registering what he said, only his tone, the clipped, short phrases, with no flo
wery addresses, not this time. This was not the occasion to make a speech. Father would have acted the same, she reflected. Why wasn’t he back yet?

  “Tell us what you saw.”

  The silence prevailed, disturbingly heavy. She counted five men, three elders of the village and two leading hunters of the Wolf Clan, squatting comfortably, but tense, highly attentive now. It was their duty to keep the village safe and functioning when the chief and the leaders of the other two clans were absent.

  “Well, girl?” It came from a Wolf Clan man, softly, not unkindly.

  “I saw warriors, foreign warriors.”

  “How did you know they were foreign warriors?” This time it was one of the elders, Paqua, the man of her own clan, his voice cold, holding an accusation.

  “They were dressed like foreigners. Their paint. Their hair.” She remembered the warrior who had scanned the hill, the way he stood there, striking and arrogant, his braid falling down his back, the shaved sides of his scalp oiled and glistening, a terrible vision.

  “What does a girl like you know about foreigners and their ways of painting or braiding their hair?” The man’s irritation was strange, jarring in its openness. What did it matter how she came by that knowledge?

  “I know how our warriors paint their faces or braid their hair.” This time, she stood the accusing gaze, angered rather than frightened. “These men did not look like our warriors. And they spoke the tongue of the setting sun lands. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but the wind was coming my way, and I know they were talking in that strange way the western enemy speaks.”

  “You said you were on the Sacred Trail.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “How could you possibly hear them from such a distance?” There was a victorious spark to the squinted, clouded eyes. Was the man trying to prove her wrong?

  She took a deep breath. “I said the wind was blowing my way. Some words almost reached my ears.”

  Almost? asked the lifted eyebrows of her interrogator.

  The Wolf Clan’s man raised his hand. “Tell us more. How long did you watch them, and what were they doing in the meanwhile?”

  She wanted to thank the man there and then, his kind eyes giving her courage.

  “I watched them for some time. They took their canoes out of the water, and they were very tense, but then they began feeling more at ease.”

  “How would you know that?” Paqua’s voice again tore her out of her painfully gained self-assurance.

  She clenched her teeth tight. “They were not speaking at first, but gesturing. Then, after their canoes were out, they began conversing. Not yelling, but still talking. They didn’t do it before.”

  “She is quite an observant little thing,” muttered someone, nodding appreciatively. “Good work, girl. What else? What were they doing when you left?”

  She tried to remember. “They were mixing things in jars or pots.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like food.”

  “With no fires?”

  “No.”

  They exchanged troubled glances.

  “How many canoes?”

  “Maybe ten.”

  More frowning.

  “There might be no more than twenty of them,” muttered the Wolf Clan’s man. “Why would so little people head for our village? It doesn’t make much sense.”

  Their nods had a stony quality to them, their eyes returning to her.

  “Anything else?”

  She tried to organize her thoughts. “I … I think not. I think I told it all to you now.” The urge to escape the oppressive semidarkness, the suspicion in their gazes, welled.

  “Good, good.” One of the elders who had said nothing so far got to his feet. “You did right by coming back as fast as you could, daughter of the Bear Clan’s Chief. You acted with courage worthy of your glorious father.”

  Not all of their gazes reflected these words; still, they warmed her inner being.

  “You may go.”

  As she turned around, relieved, she heard them letting out a heavy sigh.

  “We shall send an urgent word to our leaders in Skootuck,” Paqua was saying. “They should be apprised of the trouble. And so should the hunters we still have out there.”

  “It may be of convenience that they are at Skootuck now,” the Bear Clan’s elder said, his voice ringing stonily, but with a lightly elated tone to it now, as though the man had managed to get away with a small mischief of his own. “A good opportunity to ask for their active help. This way, we might be joining the proposed union more readily, given proof of their brotherly love and protection.”

  The footsteps were very clear, imprinted in the muddy ground, twisted, uneven, obviously hurried. No warrior’s footsteps, and not even those of a man. A boy on soft-soled moccasins, or more likely a woman, had been running very fast, careless of their step. That same frightened local he had sensed when the sun was still relatively high?

  “We can’t follow it,” said Akweks, kneeling beside the place when the runner must have slipped, but then, evidently, managed to catch his balance. “We have to go back and tell the leader.”

  Okwaho scowled. To turn back just as it began getting interesting?

  “I say we follow it, at least for a little while. Until the dusk sets. Maybe she wasn’t running far. Maybe it’ll bring us to her destination.”

  “Why are you so sure it’s her and not him?” Ronkwe, the third man, the oldest among the three of them, a seasoned warrior and a closemouthed person, glowered. “This print is small enough to belong to a young boy. A lone woman would not wander about in this way. Why would she? With the harvest and all. And anyway, we are to report back. You may have managed to convince our leader to let you inspect this hill, but he was clear about our mission. We are to look around, then come back. No independent trips along the enemy countryside.”

  “But we did find something, a trail of prints. If we leave it, it might not be here in the morning. Not so clear and obvious like now, for sure.” He moderated his tone, not happy with the addition of this man to their expedition, but trying to conceal it. If it were only him and Akweks… “Why don’t we follow it, at least for a while? The Father Sun is not about to leave our world, not yet.”

  “To follow it? Have you lost the last of your thinking ability?” The man seemed to be hanging on to his temper with difficulty, his voice having a hissing sound to it. “We are in the deepest of the enemy’s land, young man. In case you didn’t notice. Or didn’t you know you are not to stroll about, enjoying a quiet evening?”

  “I know where we are, and why we are here.” Against his will, Okwaho glared at the man, his hand fighting the urge to sneak toward his sheath and the knife it held. It was not appropriate to pick an argument with the older warrior, who was clearly here to ensure he and Akweks didn’t make a mess out of the mission he had managed to talk their leader into. Still, he wouldn’t be patronized in this way. “I didn’t suggest a stroll. The leader wanted us to check this side of the creek and see if it’s as abandoned as it looked in the beginning. Well, we did as we were told; we scanned this hill and found those footprints. To run back now, without checking them, would be foolish of us. Foolish and cowardly.”

  The man’s gaze sparkled dangerously. “Watch your tongue, warrior. Be careful of what you say.”

  He didn’t take a step back, although he wanted to, the eyes of his rival glowing darkly, promising no good.

  “We can split up,” said Akweks hurriedly. “One of us will go to report, and the others will follow the trail and see where it leads.”

  More heavy silence.

  “He can go and report, while we are going on.” Ronkwe’s eyes were the only things to move, indicating Okwaho.

  He pressed his lips tight. “Why me?”

  “Because that’s what I think is the best, young buck.” The older man seemed to regain his composure, but not his peace of mind, his eyes glimmering with an open challenge. “
We were told to check the hill, then come back. You can’t argue with your elders and betters. You are nothing but a young warrior, no matter how powerful your father is.”

  The effort to hang on to his temper was growing more difficult. “My father has nothing to do with it. I talked to our leader, and he wanted me to check these woods. And I was right—I was! We have been watched. So now I want to return with more information than just silly footprints in the mud, the footprints that will be difficult to see tomorrow morning, should we decide to find out where they lead.”

  He remembered the effort of gathering the courage to approach the leader again while they were busy devouring their meal, ground into flour maize mixed with water and sweetened with a generous amount of maple syrup. A delicious thing, but not when eaten for days on end, as they had since entering the enemy’s lands, not daring to make fire in order to prepare something else. It would spoil the surprise, although the settlement they were heading for still lay far away, almost two more dawns of sail, a reportedly large village, an important one. To take it, or just to raid it and get the most out of it, should give them a great victory. The main part of their forces must already be there, having sailed on more than two dawns ago.

  Well, he didn’t even start this conversation. Their leader was the one to start questioning him about that hillside, and why he thought they had been watched. Upon reflection, the experienced warrior said, it might be wise to check more of their surroundings, to make sure the enemy was not cherishing the idea of surprising them in their turn. There were no villages around that they knew of, not to the south of that creek. And yet …

  So it was not as though he, Okwaho, had insisted, not on the mission itself. He did make an effort to persuade the man to trust him and Akweks to do the scouting, yes, but it was not difficult, not truly. Both he and his friend were already renowned for their skills in reading the earth. But why did they have to be saddled with the arrogant Ronkwe who thought the world of himself and his ten summers of experience as a warrior? As though there were not plenty such men, most of them reaching leading positions, most but not the annoying piece of quarrelsome meat.